Huawei can become world’s top smartphone maker even without Google: CEO

Amid US' months-long investigation on Huawei and the temporary trade ban, the company's CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei has said that Huawei can become the world’s no. 1 smartphone maker even without Google.In an interview with CNN, Zhengfei said that Huawei is working on a "large scale" solution to tackle the ban it faced in the US.[caption id="attachment_5938021" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Huawei CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei.[/caption]In August this year, Huawei took the wraps off its own operating system called Harmony. There were also reports of Huawei working on its own app store. Huawei has maintained that while it would like to use its current Android ecosystem on smartphones, Harmony OS is its plan B in the case sanctions are again imposed on it. So that's probably the "large scale" backup plan Zhengfei was talking about.Huawei CEO also said that while US is the most powerful country when it comes to innovation, the country may inadvertently help the rise of competitors if it continues to place restrictions on who US companies can trade with.Last week, the Trump administration issued a new 90-day extension allowing US companies to continue doing business with Huawei as US regulators continue crafting rules on telecommunications firms that pose national security risks.According to a recent report by Gartner, Huawei was on track to become the top smartphone seller this year, only to have been beaten by Samsung due to the US ban. However, Huawei was still the only company, in Q3 2019, that achieved double-digit growth in smartphone sales. The company sold 65.8 million smartphones, an increase of 26 percent, year-over-year.